1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processor and an image processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, due to improvement in performance of a personal computer, information (number of files) in the personal computer has become enormous, and improvement of search performance is a very important issue. Also, opportunities to manage large amount of image data such as images read by a scanner and photographs taken with a digital camera has been increasing. When searching such image data, a search using a thumbnail display is used.
For example, in the technology disclosed in JP-A-2005-151127, a file is searched in the following way.    (1) A desired file is found by viewing a thumbnail and a file name.    (2) The search is performed for the file name to extract the desired file.    (3) A keyword is assigned to the file itself and the desired file is extracted by the file search.    (4) The search is performed for contents (word, sentence) of the file when the file is an OCR converted image file.
However, in the conventional technology (for example, JP-A-2005-151127), an A4 sized-file or the like obtained by the scanner or the like has a low level of visibility when displayed in thumbnail form, so that search efficiency is not high at all. For example, when the file is the image data such as the photograph, the file may be confirmed by viewing the display in thumbnail form; however, when this is document data and spreadsheet data such as a document and a ledger sheet, there is a problem that document data and spreadsheet data are too small to be recognized on the view when displayed in thumbnail form.